4000 Miles

Amy Herzog

• Publisher: Oberon Books
• Year: 2013
• Print ISBN: 9781350275379
• eBook ISBN: 9781849434638
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: Performance Art
• Index: Literature

It's the middle of the night when 21-year-old Leo arrives on the doorstep of the West Village apartment where his feisty 91-year-old grandmother Vera lives. She's an old Communist who lives alone, he's a latter-day hippie, recently returned from a cross-country bike trip which ended traumatically. Over the course of a single month, these unlikely roommates infuriate, bewilder, and ultimately connect. When Leo's old girlfriend shows up and he begins to reveal the mysterious events of his journey, Leo and Vera discover the narrow line between growing up and growing old. Peopled with nuanced, beautifully-drawn characters, Amy Herzog's award-winning play has established her as a remarkable new talent. 4000 Miles had its 2011 world première at New York's Lincoln Center Theater.

SCENE FOUR

Lights up on BEC. She is not chubby. She is in fact strong and beautiful and hale, though she is also somewhat strung out. She may wear a puffy vest over a sweater. She may wear hiking boots. She may have a Nalgene bottle.

She stands uncomfortably for a long time. VERA enters, walking slowly with a cup of tea. She sees BEC is still standing.

VERA: Take a load off.

BEC sits. VERA very gingerly, shakily, places the tea in front of her. She thinks of something.

You take sugar?

BEC: (She does.) Oh—no—

VERA sees through this and frowningly exits for sugar. BEC drops her head in her hands. Silence. VERA returns, slowly, with a sugar bowl and a few packets of Sweet and Low.

VERA: My neighbor across the hall is a diabetic, so I keep this stuff around. In case you watch that sort of thing.

BEC: Thank you.

BEC helps herself to two heaping spoonfuls of sugar while VERA watches disapprovingly.

You don’t have to—if you have something else you need to do—

VERA: You want me to leave you alone, is that it?

BEC: No, just, I don’t want you to feel you have to, like—

VERA: What?

BEC: I don’t want to be in your way!

VERA: Well, you’re not. Particularly.

VERA sits as well. They don’t know what to say to each other.

So you’re having second thoughts, is that it?

BEC: What?

No, I…no.

Another silence.

VERA: When I was first married. Not to Joe, to my first husband, Arthur. It was a week or two we had been married and a woman showed up at our apartment with luggage. Arthur said to me, “Oh I forgot to tell you, before we were married I promised I would take her away for the weekend and I didn’t want to fink on a promise.” (BEC horrified, VERA laughing.) So I said all right, and they went away, and I left my key on the piano and went home to my parents.

BEC: And you divorced him?

VERA: Oh no. He came to my parents at the end of the weekend begging and pleading and I thought it was funny that he had been so stupid so I went home with him. It wasn’t the last time he cheated.

BEC: Of course not!

VERA: When we had been married six months he went out to Hollywood with a woman…oh God, what was her name. She was rich, and neurotic. Muriel. He and Muriel went out there to write a screenplay and her father bankrolled them and Arthur never sent me a penny. And I guess they were having an affair because when he tried to end it she threatened to kill herself, and that was a terrible mess. One time we were all at Café Society…

I guess they were back from California…?

And she followed me into a cab and said, “Can’t we be friends? It eats away at me that you’re angry at me,” and so forth. And I said, “Listen, Muriel, there are people you like and people you don’t, and I don’t like you, and I want you out of this cab.” And she cried and carried on, this woman who had been sleeping with my husband for two years…

Long pause. BEC drinks her tea.

Then there was the waitress he met in Arkansas. And he came home and confessed he was in love with her, and I said, “Listen, she’s a hick, you have nothing in common, I’m sure the sex is terrific and whatnot but why don’t you go back there and spend a few weeks with her and see if there’s really enough there for you to leave our marriage.” And he did. And sure enough he came back and said “You’re right, we ran out of things to talk about.” And that was that.

He was a cheater and a drunk, but I liked him till the day he died.

BEC: (Blurting it out.) I’m not sure what you’re trying to tell me.

VERA: What?

BEC: I don’t know what you want me to—why are you telling me this?

VERA: I was just making conversation. I wasn’t getting much help from you.

BEC: But you’re going on and on about these—like, parables of tolerance and forgiveness—you should have left him!

VERA: I did, eventually.

BEC: But you put up with like—and you tell these stories like you’re proud of them.

VERA: (Seeing that BEC is truly upset.) Okay, listen—

BEC: This woman, who you tried to push out of a cab, you should have pushed him out of a cab, she was coming to you / for understanding—

VERA: I see I’ve struck a / nerve.

BEC: I’m not going to forgive him!

VERA: All right. All right.

BEC struggling to get control, VERA totally unsure what to do.

BEC: I’m sorry, I’ve been really…

And I can’t believe he’s fucking late, I can’t believe…

VERA: Listen, I wasn’t trying to say forgive him or don’t forgive him. I don’t know what you should do, that’s your affair.

I was trying to say…men sometimes do things that can be very…but you have to remember that it’s more out of stupidity than anything else. It’s not, whaddayacallit. Malicious. It’s just stupid and childish.

BEC: I guess, um… (Searching for the inoffensive way to say this.) I don’t make those kinds of allowances, based on gender? I wouldn’t want anyone ...

Table of contents

• Front Cover
• Half-Title Page
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Contents
• Characters
• Scene One
• Scene Two
• Scene Three
• Scene Four
• Scene Five
• Scene Six
• Scene Seven
• Scene Eight
• Scene Nine
• Scene Ten